One State for one People. Thou shalt not be a victim, or perpetrator, but above all, thou shalt not be a bystander. Yasher Koach!

August 13, 2014

The Jew in You. How real is your Jewish identity?

by Rabbi Jack Cohen

For the past 10 years,
psychologist Carol Dweck at Columbia (now Stanford) has studied the
effect of praise on children. Her seminal study on 400 fifth-graders
sheds light on the stuff that people are made of. Students were
administered a series of IQ tests. After the first test, one group of
students was praised for their intelligence, while the other group was praised for their efforts.

The second group – those
praised for their efforts not talents – consistently proved to be more
ambitious when offered a choice between an easy test and a more
difficult test. They took responsibility for their failings when
unbeknownst to them were given a test beyond their abilities. And,
fascinatingly, they did 30% better on follow-up tests than their
original test. In contrast, those praised for being smart alone,
ironically did 20% worse on follow-up tests than the initial control
test they took.

Why is this the case?

The stuff a person is made
of is the stuff of truth. If we're praised for being smart, attractive,
charming, etc., part of us would like to feel good about it, but in our
heart of hearts, we know that we deserve zero credit for any of
those qualities. Almost as surely as if we were praised for being tall
when we knew we were short.

We received our gifts
either through nature or nurture, and therefore the praise is misplaced.
It may be true that we're all those things, but the praise as praise is just not true.

We truly live at the battlefront where we make choices. My self, in the truest sense, can be found only at the point at which I am exerting effort.

You don't choose to be
gifted, but you do choose what you do with those gifts. In fact, the
only thing we choose is how hard we try. If we get recognized for our
efforts, that rightfully fortifies our self-esteem, and motivates us to
keep trying. On the other hand, the seeming "nicety" of praise for being
smart, if detached from the effort we made to work hard, has the
opposite effect. It causes us to rest on our laurels and simultaneously
feel bad for not making the full use of the gifts we've been given –
resulting, counterintuitively, in decreased self-esteem.

Self-esteem must be real.
It can't be faked. So how we perceive ourselves must be an accurate
reflection of the stuff of what we're made of – which is the fruit of
our efforts.

Jewish Identity under Attack

The dichotomy between real and false esteem comes to play with our Jewish identity as well.

As someone who works with
20-something college students, I see upfront that Jewish identity is
vanishing. Less and less young Jews identify as Jewish. And the reason
is simple: identity must be real. It cannot be based on superficial
factors alone. Camp songs, Seinfeld reruns, and mother's guilt just
won't cut it anymore. A previous generation’s nostalgic connection has
no real bearing on our inner core.

Most young people are
content to leave their Jewish identity undefined, nebulous. Until they
encounter the reality of anti-Semitism, a cosmic force programmed into
the fabric of human history that serves as the crucible for our identity
through its applied heat. Anti-Semitism forces us to confront our
Jewish identity.

If our response when
attacked for being Jewish is, "Maybe it's something we did wrong," our
self-doubt compels us to run and try to fix the flaw, like the bullied
teenager who changes his wardrobe to avoid the bully's criticism.

But the proud Jew who
understands the meaning of Jewish has a different response. When he sees
the protests, the riots, the arson of a major kosher super market,
threats of attacks on civilians, outcries that remain unheard to
massacres many times larger, he is emboldened to take a stand to be
unapologetically Jewish. The response is a galvanizing of Jews together.

In the face of raw,
unadulterated hatred, we are challenged to stand taller and prouder. It
cuts away the superficiality that comprises our Jewish identity and
compels us to discover something much more real within.

To be a Jew means to choose
to be a Jew. It means thousands of decisions every day in how to think,
how to feel, how to treat others, what not to eat, what to strive for.
It means being the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of
survivors sons or survivors sons of survivors – all of whom chose – actively in those thousands of daily decisions – to survive as Jews.

We are living in difficult
times. Platitudes, propaganda, and politics are showing their true
colors. May we use these forces to deepen our Jewishness and unify, to
show our true colors as well.

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About Me

I write this blog to voice an opinion of a : non-PC, non-politically affiliated, pro meritocracy, TNSTAAFL, believer in NO man, that is sick and tired of the Arab / Muslim taqiyya campaign of lies and fabrication, who is striving for observance and Aliyah.